The past week or so has been extremely quiet, for several reasons. Anna’s in Vancouver on a job and so it’s just me and the cats banging around the house, for the most part. The weather, too, managed to kill off a couple of attempts to get out and about — Britain really, truly, cannot understand even the merest snowfall. I know people joke about it, but I think it’s actually a serious problem. The whole place shuts down.

I’ve been beavering away on a few things, and watching some fruit fall from the tree. Primarily, my piece for Wired UK — profiling the work of Jan Chipchase and examining the phenomenon of shanzhai technologists in China — is finally out, in print at least. More of that in a forthcoming post.

At the moment, though, most things are still in gestation. I’ve talked before about how the commissioning process is the thing I’m really learning a lot about; the time it takes, the effort you expend on trying to get work, the dead ends, the frustrations, the excitement. I’m still learning, and still trying to get the cycle to work better for me.

Really, I need to score a couple of commissions before Christmas really kicks in. If my knowledge of the British media industry is worth anything (and that’s debatable) then I reckon everybody will soon be winding down for the holidays and if I don’t get any work in the next week or so that may be it — more or less — until the New Year. Hopefully that’s not the case for American outlets, who regard Christmas as a brief postscript to Thanksgiving.